Vivarium
by x Varda x
Summary: First Rodney gets shrunk in a gate malfunction. Then he gets captured by an avid bug collector. Ouch!


_Vivarium (from Wikipedia) - an enclosed area for keeping and raising animals or plants for observation or research._

**Vivarium**

It was a gate malfunction that shrunk Rodney.

While the rest of the team seemed to be alright, he had no other option than to run for his life out of the way of their stomping feet.

He barely avoided being crushed under Ronon's boots. At least, he _thought_ it was Ronon as he dived out of the way of another ground shaking stamp.

His radio wouldn't work and he couldn't get their attention. But he could still hear them. They asked Atlantis if he was there. They waited and eventually the gate shut down on its own.

Rodney contemplated climbing up onto the boots and perhaps the legs of his team mates. But that was not only grossly inappropriate, but he was likely to get swatted like a bug before they realised it was him.

Instead, he hid under a tree sized stalk, surrounded by the razor sharp grass taller than he was that swished and swayed noisily all around.

The next thing he knew, they were gone and he was jostled from the earthquake.

They'd left him behind! He'd be stuck on the planet and shrunk forever!

He was contemplating how to boost his radio so that it worked, when a giant hand parted the canopy over his head and grabbed him. His sight faded out from the G-force as he was quickly pulled up and deposited into a house-sized glass jar and sealed inside. He hit his knees against the sides of the unforgiving glass and only saved his head by covering it with his arms.

He lay in the bottom of the jar and curled up as tightly as he could to avoid further injury and waited for the pain to subside.

He winced when a loud resonant clanging sounded right next to his head. He covered his ears with his hands and screwed his face up.

The next thing Rodney knew was that his prison was being roughly shaken. He fell from one side to another, hitting just about everything in the process.

He struggled to his feet and pressed his hands to the glass to peer out at his tormentor. "Stop! Stop!" he shouted. "I'm not a spider!"

Then he saw his captor for the first time. He was huge - Rodney estimated he was now about the same size of one of the man's fingers.

He narrowed his eyes and looked closer. Not, not man, but boy. The person who had grabbed him was only a boy, although a massive one.

"Too many beans… grew too fast." Rodney mumbled sadly.

The boy seemed happy that Rodney was now up and moving, so stopped trying to kill him and put the jar in a dark bag.

Rodney fell down and curled up into a foetal position again. His radio was smashed beyond useless. He was alone and didn't like his chances against the giants.

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Rodney's small prison had holes drilled into the lid, but he was still grateful to be released from the stuffy and stale air surrounding him. As the jar lid came off and the container was tipped up, he fell a short distance and landed on a pebble beach.

"Between a hard place and a rock," Rodney gasped into the stones where he lay.

A voice boomed out, making Rodney flinch and tremble. "What do you eat then?"

"The same as you, but no citrus," Rodney said.

The boy ignored him.

"And water!"

There was no response and then Rodney realised that he was probably too small in body, lungs and voice to be heard.

He shouted as loudly as he could, but the boy was gone.

Rodney stood up and glanced around at his new home that would no doubt become the place of his death fairly soon if his care so far was anything to judge by.

He was in a large glass box, the floor of which was entirely covered in the same pebbles he had landed on. There were a few large leaves and a skyscraper of a heating lamp in the corner. Rodney went over to the leaves and explored to make sure there was nothing else trapped in there with him.

He still had his tac vest, knife, gun, torch, first aid kit and a few supplies – extra ammo, bandages and painkillers. He took one of the precious pills for his many aches and pains from all the bruising and stumbled over the large uneven pebbles to take a look around.

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"Where are you hiding?"

Rodney cowered under the leaves and covered his head. But he was the only occupant of the sparsely decorated cage, so he couldn't hide for long.

The boy picked him up between thumb and forefinger – the thumb pressed mercilessly into Rodney's soft belly and the finger crushed his back until he couldn't breathe and passed out.

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Rodney woke up back in the glass box. There was a swimming pool in the prison now, along with a play park comprised of large light brown blocks that went up to his waist.

Then he realised that it was food and water. And he was being watched.

His clutched his middle and crawled over to the water and gulped some down. He tore a patch of the squashy brown substance and sniffed at it. It smelt like chocolate, so he nibbled a tiny bit and chewed it thoughtfully. It _tasted_ a little bit like chocolate too, but earthier with a hint of banana.

He was just about to take a second bite, when a different voice spoke outside the glass chamber.

"Oh, is that another bug?"

"Yes. I'm just feeding it now."

"Good. Well, try to take care of this one unlike the last one, alright?"

Rodney lost his appetite.

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Rodney was woken from his mournful and terrified slumber when he was forcefully grabbed again. The boy held him in the palm of his hand and gazed down. His face was so large, it was difficult for Rodney to see his expression.

"I'm Dr Rodney McKay of Atlantis. Let me go."

The boy's eyes, each larger than DHDs, widened and he said, "So, you make noises too? Quietly though. Let's see how loud you can be."

Rodney coughed as he was slammed down onto his back on a large white ledge. On one side there was another pane of glass that went up and up and up as far as he could see. Beyond it was bright blue sky and a burning sun.

The boy held him pinned with his thumb across Rodney's lower legs and his forefinger pressing Rodney's upper chest so that he could only move his arms to push against the finger holding him flat on the ledge in full sun.

Rodney could already feel his skin blistering before the boy held a round device above him. It was a ring of black as large as the stargate when Rodney had been normal size. It had a handle and then Rodney saw that it too had glass inside.

Rodney pushed harder, squirmed and wriggled, but he was too small and nowhere near as strong as his grossly over-scaled tormentor. The beam of light focused by the glass stopped in the centre of Rodney's chest and quickly burnt through his clothes and met skin.

He screamed and writhed and the light slipped, burning a less severe line down his middle. He bit the fleshy finger in front of his face and spat out the skin he'd chewed off.

The boy abruptly let him go and the concentrated light from the glass vanished.

Rodney sobbed and looked down at himself to find out the damage. His breathing was shaky and painful and there was dampness spreading from the red-raw patch on his chest. He turned over onto his front and crawled along the ledge, trying to get away. Tears of hopelessness and pain streamed from his eyes and dripped down onto the white, to mingle with the red blood and clear plasma.

A pressure on his back forced him flat onto his face, just before he was lifted up again.

The boy peered at him curiously and smiled malevolently.

Rodney shouted at him, "I told you! I'm not a spider! Take me to the gate and let me go!"

The boy responded by gripping Rodney's hand and wrist between his thumb and forefinger. He stretched out Rodney's left arm while holding his body tightly in his other hand.

He tugged and Rodney screamed again. The boy was trying to pull his arm off! He only had four limbs!

Rodney felt his shoulder popping out of the socket and the muscles straining against the unstoppable force. Soon he was no longer screaming, his mouth open wide in a silent 'O' for it was too painful for him to draw or expel any breath to make a sound.

"What are you doing?"

The mother was back.

The pressure relaxed and Rodney's shoulder slammed back in. Not dislocated, but screaming at him as badly as before.

The boy dropped him back in the cage, where Rodney was violently sick and then crawled as far as he could towards the water to soothe his burns, but it was too far to the bowl and he passed out.

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The boy left Rodney alone for a few days after that. He was occasionally prodded with the end of a lamp post, which turned out to be the blunt end of a pencil. But Rodney found that as long as he kept moving to show that he was alive, he didn't get hit.

The boy's finger had a plaster around it from Rodney's bite and that gave him a small amount of savage satisfaction.

He'd bandaged his chest and eaten most of the painkillers now, but his antibiotics ran out a while ago and he could feel his life running out too as he felt a fever coming on. He didn't think he would survive it – he didn't have any hope left and just wanted it to be over now. There was no way he was going to be rescued and he doubted anyone on Atlantis would know what had happened to him.

Using a piece of cloth from the first aid kit in his tac vest, he'd made a sling to keep his wrenched arm and shoulder immobile.

He spent as much time as he could hiding under the leaves, but several large bruises later and Rodney decided it wasn't worth it, so he slept near the food and water. He allowed dreams of Atlantis and freedom to permeate all his thoughts as his mind became his only escape from the nightmare of reality.

He suspected the others had given up on him long ago, probably thinking he'd been lost in a Stargate buffer malfunction and turned to nothing. Rodney rolled over and away from the sweeping lamp post that whacked him on his good arm and wished more than anything that their assumption had been the case.

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A day later and Rodney was weak and breathless from the infection caused by the oozing and painful burns to his chest. He couldn't eat and didn't have the strength to get to the water anymore.

Alternating hot and cold, like daggers of ice inside his chest and a fiery furnace the next moment, made it hard to breathe anything other than shallow gasps. All the while his body vibrated with tremors that abruptly changed until it was shivers wracking him.

When the pencil/lamp-post came down to prod him, he couldn't move and hoped the next hit would be to his head and kill him outright.

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The next day his captor found him a friend.

_A car sized, six legged, double-pincered friend that is._

The boy dropped the monstrous creature into the cage near Rodney and stood watching in anticipation.

The armoured crab scuttled over and snapped its claws at Rodney. They were razor sharp and it looked like one good snip and Rodney would be in pieces.

He started away from the sound and mumbled, "Leave me alone while I'm dying."

The creature jabbed the closed pincer into Rodney's stomach and he cried out. "I said leave me alone!"

He rolled over and staggered to his feet.

"Fight fight fight!" A voice boomed out overhead. "Are you going to eat each other? That would be so much fun!"

"Not if I can help it," Rodney whispered as he avoided another stabbing pincer. He went to his stash to retrieve the weapons he'd put there when he realised he was too badly hurt to carry them all the time and that they couldn't save him from the boy.

He only prayed that they would help him with this.

He peppered the creature with bullets from the P90. Wincing with each recoil going through his battered, broken and dying body. He ignored the loud sound the gun made as each bullet flew out with a bang and found its mark. He also ignored the growing damp patch on the front of his t-shirt.

"What's going on in here?" A woman asked overhead.

Rodney looked up through bleary eyes to see her staring right down at him. Her face was sufficiently distant that Rodney could see her expression was one of horror.

Rodney couldn't speak anymore as he fell to his knees and the crab kept coming at him – its armour too thick to be breached by the bullets. He mouthed, "Help me!" and keeled over.

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Rodney woke up in pain and finding it harder to breathe. There was a bright light on his face and he was lying in the middle of a hard brown surface that went on for a while and then abruptly stopped on all sides. The rest of the room was in darkness.

The woman – his saviour – was nearby, watching him intently. Rodney turned his face away and blinked back the tears his betraying eyes tried to shed from the pain. He was spread-eagled, but he couldn't and didn't want to move.

"What are you?" The woman asked.

She reached forwards and Rodney shut his eyes tightly, but she merely said, "It's alright. It will allow me to hear you, if you _can_ speak."

Rodney cracked his eyes open and frowned at the narrow end of a funnel near his face.

"I'm Dr McKay. Something went wrong with the stargate as I came through and I got shrunk."

The woman's eyes widened as he spoke and she held her ear to the other end of the funnel. "Then… you're human too?"

"Yes. Take me to the gate. Help me to go home."

The woman shook her head. "I can't do that. I'd get a lot of money selling you to the zoo or a laboratory for further research."

"But I'll die!" Rodney cried. "I'm _already_ dying. Seriously, they wouldn't want me and they can't help me. Whatever your delightful offspring did is killing me. I'll be dead before you can hand me over."

The woman's face fell and her brow furrowed. She took the funnel away when Rodney had finished and leant over to examine him more closely. She took in all the bandages, cuts, scrapes and bruises covering him and Rodney lifted the lower edge of his shirt. Her face deepened to a frown at what she saw that Rodney had not been able to look at himself.

"You're hurt," she said.

She walked away and came back a few minutes later with some thin strips of cloth and moved Rodney into a sitting position to bind them around his pincer stabbed, bleeding abdomen.

Rodney lay back and remained still. He opened his mouth again and the funnel reappeared. "It's not enough," he said. "I'm still going to die because it's already infected. A few hours, maybe a day and I'll be useless."

"The nearest zoo is many miles from here," she said. "If that is true, I wouldn't get you there in time." She scooped him off the table and placed him inside another one of the jars – slightly larger than last time and with tissue in the bottom to cushion his landing. "We don't have a lot of time and must leave now."

Rodney curled into a tight ball and huddled into the side of the jar as he shivered and trembled with his eyes wide. He was a dead man. He'd never see his friends or Atlantis again. They'd probably already had his memorial, so fitting that he should actually be dead to make the assumptions of everyone back on Atlantis true.

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Rodney woke up again in the palm of the woman's hand. She was not actively prodding him to wake him up, but speaking under her voice.

"Wake up. Oh, please wake up!"

Rodney lifted his hand up as far as he could.

"Good. Now, tell me the gate address of your home so that I can let you go."

Rodney frowned and spoke to the funnel that moved near his mouth. "Why?"

"Your blood is red, like mine and everyone else who has breath to speak. If your people can help you, then you have no place here. Even for all the money, it's not worth it."

Rodney nodded slowly and told her the gate address to the Alpha Site.

She continued to carry him and Rodney closed his eyes tiredly and muttered, "Not exactly the way I thought I was going to go. But at least they'll know how I died now."

His sight filled with bright blue light and then there was nothing.

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Rodney woke up lying on a soft surface this time. His mind was showing him nightmarish images of being a small and helpless child's plaything - like a bug whose many legs only existed to be pulled off for senseless fun. He was probably lying in a hand right now and waited for the beam of concentrated sunlight to burn his body and make him shriek again.

Nothing happened.

Rodney narrowly opened his eyes and baulked.

Somehow he was in the infirmary back on Atlantis, normal sized, safe, medicated and bandaged.

He frowned over at the sleeping form of John Sheppard drooling next to him with his head lolling at an angle that would cause him some problems with his neck when he woke up.

Rodney glanced along himself. His arm was in a sling and his chest and lower belly were swathed in bandages.

So it _had_ been real.

Rodney drew a breath through his nose and curled his upper lip at the tubing there, but it made him feel stronger.

A voice whispered into his ear, "I see you're awake, Rodney."

He started and winced as he turned to find Carson watching him intently, his face torn between sympathy, relief and gratitude.

Carson continued in the same low voice, "We didn't know if you'd be alright after what happened to you. You were gone for so long. We thought…" Carson sniffed and turned away briefly. His voice was even quieter and his face fell into sorrow, "We thought we'd lost you. I cannae get John to leave your side at all."

"Hence the whispering," Rodney muttered back.

"Aye."

"So, what happened after that woman got through the gate?"

"She told the lads at the Alpha Site exactly what had happened. We already knew. Once Radek found out the gate had gone wrong, we went back and tried to find you, but you were gone. Ronon thought he'd stepped on you and spent the next week constantly checking the bottoms of his shoes for traces."

"But you gave up," Rodney said sadly and turned his face away.

Carson looked horrified, "We never… we wouldn't. I-I can't…"

Carson's eyes shone and Rodney frowned and said quickly, "So Radek reversed the malfunction and returned me to my normal size and then you fixed me up."

"Aye."

Rodney lifted his unhurt arm and used his hand to poke at the bandages around his middle. He winced as a deep ache spread out through his midsection and made him gasp.

Carson grabbed his wrist, "Less of that. You're badly hurt. Stabbed. Feverish and burnt. You have severe muscle damage and torn ligaments in your left arm and shoulder."

Rodney frowned and Carson let go of him. "How long was I gone and how long have I been out?"

"Gone for a couple of weeks and unconscious for another week after surgery."

"Three weeks!" Rodney closed his eyes. "The labs will be in disarray by now! Imagine all the discoveries that have been missed."

"I'm sure Radek did just fine."

"John!" Carson said when he noticed that the heavy breathing had stopped and another pair of eyes were watching them. "Were you listening the whole time?"

Sheppard gave him a mysterious look, "Military training is to sleep with one eye open all the time." He grinned broadly at Rodney, "Back with us at last, thought you'd sleep forever."

Rodney grimaced back at him.

"Imagine what you could've done being so small…"

John raised his eyebrows and Rodney graced him with a disgusted incredulous glare. John smirked back at him and Carson shook his head at both of them and rolled his eyes.

Carson said, "I'm glad you're back with us and feeling better, Rodney. I'll leave you two to catch up."

John didn't say anything for few minutes and Rodney shifted uncomfortably under his gaze before he asked, "Is there something stuck on my face? Oh, yes, the oxygen tube thing."

John frowned and at length he said quietly, "We thought you were dead."

Rodney barked a humourless laugh and said in a high voice, "I wish I had been. Tortured endlessly for two weeks. It felt longer."

John grabbed Rodney's unhurt hand and squeezed tightly before letting go with an embarrassed expression. He cleared his throat, "Well, I'm glad you came back and are on the mend."

Rodney shifted again and asked, "Are we going to hug now? You know I don't like all this touchy feely stuff."

John sat back and nodded, "That's better."

Rodney glared at him.

John elaborated, "To know that you weren't broken or permanently damaged. Being turned into a bug-sized man didn't shake bad attitude out of you." John shuddered at the word 'bug.'

"And that's a good thing? Most people hate the attitude."

John blinked, but didn't rise to the bait.

Rodney frowned down at his bandages, "I hope that woman made her delightful son give up his bug collecting hobby. I hope he doesn't catch anymore red-blooded insects."

"Radek fixed the gate after he broke it for you. It'll never happen again."

"Good."

Rodney furrowed his brow, "What he did to me. Trying to pull my arm off… why would he do that? Why would _anyone_ do it? Even a child to an insect?"

John was looking distinctly uncomfortable.

Rodney's face fell, "You didn't!"

John grimaced.

"You did! But why?"

John shrugged. "Power and control I suppose. But thinking about it now, I don't really have any idea."

Rodney sunk down in his bed and drew the covers up higher with his working hand.


End file.
